Tag: Life Stories

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Smoking,by Gillian

“I
quit smoking when I was in college”,  I
say, righteously; but that is a huge distortion of the truth!
It’s
not exactly a lie. I have probably not smoked more than ten cigarettes since
the late 1950’s. But I didn’t quit in the sense of the huge conscious
effort of concentrated willpower the word implies. I just kind of drifted away
from it and never really missed it; rather in the same way I had drifted into
it. It was attractive, for a while, in the way of all forbidden things,
especially to the young. We smuggled ill-gotten packs of cigarettes onto the
school bus, puffing away at them huddled on the back seat while the driver
turned a blind eye. He chain-smoked so why should he care if we took a few
inexpert drags?
I
didn’t quite get the attraction, but of course did not say so. There’s a limit to how much of an odd-ball one
is willing to become, and holding a cigarette between my fingers for a few
seconds every now and then was a cheap price to pay for belonging: not being an
outcast. (Being the child of a local teacher offers many challenges.)  Nobody seemed to notice whether I ever
actually placed the cigarette between my lips, much less inhaled. Life was
easy.
In
college, at any social gathering, I always had a drink in my hand. So did my
fellow party-goers. Most of them also held a smoldering cigarette. But the
drink was my membership card, so few, if any, noticed the lack of burning
embers.
A
few years later, at a party with several twenty-something co-workers, my husband
and I both had the obligatory drink-in-the-hand when the joint came by. We both
passed it on, untouched by human lips; untouched by ours, anyway. We both knew
that we had enough of a challenge controlling the attractions of alcohol and
had no need of another.
So,
in a very strange way, booze has saved me.
But
the attitude of the medical profession towards drinking and smoking which I
find rather strange.
“Yes”,
I acknowledge, “I probably drink more than is good for me.”
“Do
you smoke?” is the inevitable response.
I
think if I said, “There’s a huge pink elephant in the corner of your office,” the
reply would probably be, “How many packs do you average a day?’”
© August 2016 
About the Author 
I was born and
raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S.
and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder
area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four
stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself
as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years.
We have been married since 2013.
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Where I Was When Kennedy Was Shot, by Ricky

I was in a theater watching a movie. 
I think it was a western, but I don’t remember for sure.  When he was shot, I wasn’t sad at all because
he was a bad man.  I went home feeling
rather good about the movie as John Wayne triumphed again.  Later on in his career, Kennedy won an Oscar
for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the movie Cool Hand Luke.  George Kennedy 18 Feb 1925 to 28 Feb 2016.
Joseph Kennedy Sr. was not shot but died in 1969 8-years after suffering
a stroke less than one year after his son was elected president.  I was in the Air Force at the time and really
didn’t care.
Joe Kennedy Jr. was killed in a bomber explosion during WWII.  I wasn’t even born at that time so I don’t
know where I was at the time.
Robert F. Kennedy was shot dead on 5 June 1968.  I was in an Air Force tech school in Texas
studying to become a Radio Intercept Analysist. 
I was sad because his brother was also shot.  I learned later that Robert’s young son was
upstairs in their hotel room watching the events on television and saw his
father get shot and die.  I can only
imagine the trauma that inflicted upon him.
Edward M. Kennedy died 25 August 2009 of complications from a malignant
brain tumor and was not shot.  I was living
at my current home in Lakewood, Colorado, but once again, I didn’t care very
much.
John F. Kennedy Jr. was born 25 November 1960 and died in a plane crash
16 July 1999.  I did grieve for him as I
still remembered him as the little boy who saluted his father’s caisson as it
passed him on its way to Arlington National Cemetery.  As I noted above, he was not shot.
John F. Kennedy was shot 22 November 1963 while I was taking a biology
test as a sophomore in high school.  I
had not studied for the test and was struggling with the answers.  I was about half way through the exam when
Mr. Al Hilldinger opened the door and shouted, “Kennedy’s been shot.”  The next day, our biology teacher, Mr. Harold
Mapes, gave us all a revised test because we had all done so poorly on the
previous day’s exam.  He blamed it on the
Kennedy assassination.  I wish he had
told us about the second text so I could have studied for it, but he didn’t and
I did better but not up to my normal performance on that test.
This “story” would have been much shorter if the topic would have been
just a bit more specific when referring to people.  There are way too many people named Kennedy
to just be so generic by using last names only.
© 3 Apr 2017 
About the Author 
 I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their
farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents
divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
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My Happiest Day, by Ray S

Where do I start? Looking back over many years the end
result for me is that there were just as many happiest. Sorting them for this
story was the challenge and not necessarily in any order of importance—just
Happiest days as they occurred in the life and times of one who has had the
privilege of hanging around this sphere so long.
Some fifty plus years ago the happiest days were
marked by the arrival of several of our baby son and daughter.  Certainly, those two gifts came along with the
trials and tribulations of all of us growing up together, but today the loving
rewards far outnumber those trials.
Which was the happiest day? The day was one of my
luckiest with the receipt of my army discharge, the little gold button
disparagingly christened the “ruptured duck” and the G. I. Bill, a gift of a
college education, and a whole new world to try and master.
In retrospect with diploma in hand I looked around and
asked my fellow classmate, “What do we do now?” that was happy in the guise of
wonder. We survived in spite of ourselves.
There was along the way a surreal wedding with an
unsuspecting (I think) college sweetheart, not to be confused with any happiest
day, but some did happen later and we actually survived to feast on the joy of
many Christmases, Halloweens, graduations, and holidays.
For all of the above perhaps these were
“semi-happiest”, but full of the excitement and comfortable routine of home and
family.
“My Happiest Day” happened when I sensed the feeling
of belonging to my true GLBTQ family and marching behind the color guard in my
first Pride Parade. Liberation abounded for me and since then I have surround
my body with a rainbow flag, kissing and hugging the members of my tribe and
even more members. Stop and think about it all, right now and see if you don’t
recall the heady exultation and joy of your first “outness”?
And the parade marches on!
© 31 October 2016 
About the Author 
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Games, by Phillip Hoyle

As a kid I never much liked games of competition, but
I did like games of simulation. The former were based on beating
others—winning. My early aversion arose most likely from my lack of physical
strength and coordination combined with my weak skills in strategizing. If I
ran a race, I simply ran. The problem was that I ran too slowly. I couldn’t
throw balls far or fast and the balls rarely showed up where I thought I was
throwing them. At the shooting range I couldn’t see very well even though I had
no idea of that. Then when I got corrective lenses I never could figure out how
to compensate. I had a hard time concentrating on activities that didn’t
capture my imagination.
I avoided football and baseball. I was attracted to
basketball, but I wasn’t even a good basketball player. I wasn’t aggressive
enough and didn’t care to be better than the other guys. But growing up I did
like games like War, Cops and Robbers, and my favorite, Cowboys and Indians. I
probably liked the costuming, props, and improvisatory acting. I was especially
repelled by party games—games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, or dropping
clothes pins into milk bottles. I could play cards: War, Canasta, Gin Rummy, Pinochle,
Poker, and Pitch, but I abhorred spin the bottle. I wasn’t interested to kiss
anyone (well until 10th grade when I learned to kiss Buddy).
I started working in churches fulltime in 1970 at the
outbreak of the Learning Games Movement. Some of these were pretty awful and
met strong resistance particularly from adult groups. I did like the Simulation
Games—an accommodation of military training practices used to introduce
students to strategic thinking as related to their topics of study. (It seems
strange that I liked them given their origins!) Of course school teachers had
long used competitive games like spelling bees and other more complicated ones
like debate. Even in my high school years church youth rallies sported television
game-show-inspired competitions over biblical knowledge pitting teams from
neighboring churches. Although I knew the Bible pretty well, I never was
interested to use the knowledge for purposes of showing off. It seemed somehow
antithetical to the sense of charity or cooperation I learned from the Good
Book’s best teachings. And remember, I was not very competitive.
During the 70s the New Games Movement started
introducing cooperative games strategized to create community—Hippie-inspired group
play that featured Earth Balls and sometimes flowers. I started developing similar
games—both the New Games and Simulations—for youth retreats and elementary
residential camps, ones related directly to the curricular themes and that
often involved the creation of environments, for example, a simulated
archaeological dig or a Middle-Eastern marketplace. These were much more
related to the simulation games of childhood than they were to sporting events,
and they proved effective in teaching.
To this day I fail to understand any competition that devalues
human life—either that of an individual or of a group. Still I do appreciate
the grace and power of athletes. I also like a couple of card games that have
so little strategy as not to stifle conversation among the players. But I don’t
like playing even those games with players who take winning too seriously.
Lest you think I am just an old stick in the mud, I
will admit to enjoying the Christmas games my youngest granddaughters planned
for our family. They involved individuals and teams. My favorite was the Reindeer
Game. For my team I hurriedly blew up and tied off small balloons until I was
out of breath and feeling very light headed. The balloons were then stuffed
into panty hose. The team that first successfully filled the legs like antlers
and whose reindeer donned them first won. Selected for the honor of being the
reindeer were my son Michael and his wife Heather. They looked bizarrely cute,
but my favorite part of that game was my daughter Desma’s story of trying to
purchase panty hose. Suppliers have become rare. Finally she found a store that
still carries them. The clerk said, “Yes, we have them. You must be going to
play the Reindeer Game; it’s all the rage at the State workers’ office parties
this year. You got here just in time.” Handing Desma the hosiery she said, “Here
are the last two pair.”
Oh the games people play.
© 16 January 2017 
About the Author 
 Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Preparation, by Lewis Thompson

This is a difficult
subject to write about.  First of all,
doing something that requires “preparation” usually implies that
something is about to happen that I would just as soon not happen at all, such as
an appointment with my attorney, having blood drawn, restricted diets, going
for a job interview (those days are behind me, thank heavens), or having a
colonoscopy.  But it also occurs to me
that nearly everyone occasionally has these things happen to them so it would
only bore them to hear me talk about how I prep myself for them, as it likely
is very close to their own groundwork. 
One exception,
however–and perhaps someone will have chosen to write about this–is preparing
oneself for one’s own death.  And, when I
say this, I don’t mean wills and durable-powers-of-attorney.  I’m talking about how people choose to die–the
when, where, and with the assistance of whom. 
However, I haven’t prepared the necessary groundwork to write about that
subject, so I shall have to punt and simply describe what I see as the
requisite characteristics of something for which preparation is normally
required–or not.  Here is my list:
1.   
My first rule on the subject of
preparation is to never prepare for something that can be avoided.  Preparation is work, some of it unpleasant or
tedious.  It’s much better simply to
change your plans to allow you to avoid any preparation and simply relax and do
something you enjoy instead.
2.   
Second, never make preparations yourself
that you can get someone else to do for you. 
I like to have a clean car when I begin a road trip.  I used to wash my car myself, which only
detracted from the pleasure of travelling. Now, I take my car to the car wash
and have the hard work done by someone else. 
I can recoup the cost simply by driving slower, thus saving on gas.
3.   
Third, I avoid potlucks.  At potlucks, you are expected to prepare
something to share with others.  Since I
don’t cook, I usually skip potlucks–unless, that is, I take the time to take
advantage of my 2nd point and buy something that someone else has made and take
that.
4.   
Similarly, I avoid family reunions.  I used to spend hours trying to memorize the
names of my family members so I could properly greet them at the reunions.  Since I had nine aunts and uncles and dozens
of cousins, that was very time-consuming. 
Fortunately, they were scattered to the four corners of the USA, so it
was rarely necessary.
5.   
As I mentioned before, I don’t cook.  The closest I come is when I make popcorn in
the microwave.  Cooking is nothing if not
preparation.  Now, I take advantage of
wonderful cooks who do the prep for me. 
They say time is money and, in this case, it is money well-spent–on
such things as eating out and frozen entrees and dinners.  I won’t tell you which brands I like because
I’m not prepared to try to beat you all to the frozen food aisle at Queen
Soopers before they’re sold out.
As I’m not prepared to
write any more, I’ll just stop here.  If
you take only one thing with you from this little missive of mine, let it be
this:  preparations are for people who
are either anal-retentive or control freaks. 
They should think about being less prepared and more available to enjoy
life fully.
© 17 Aug 2017 
About
the Author 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and had two
children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married
to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was
passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were
basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very
attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that
time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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Movies, by Gillian

I have never been a
really fully-paid-up member of the movie-goers club. In fact I seem to have
had, over my lifetime, something of a love/hate relationship with movies. The
love side has been made up mostly of documentaries, or what they call ‘docudramas’,
which probably makes me something of a dull person to be around; someone who
prefers, for the most part, fact over fiction. Strangely, though, the opposite
is true of books. I rarely read non-fiction books, much preferring to escape
into the land of make-believe.
Perhaps it is in fact
that very make-believe which has tripped me up. My childhood, in the time and
place that it was, related little to movies. There were cinemas in the towns in
the England of the 1940’s and ’50’s but I and my family and friends had no way
to get to them. There were early TV’s, too, in some places, but non of us had
one. So escape was down to books. And once you are accustomed to using your own
imagination, making the written story and characters look exactly the way you
want them, it’s hard to switch happily to strangers creating the images for
you.
And then, of course,
there was the gay thing. Though barely even subliminal, in my youth, it was
there. Reading the book, I could make Jane Eyre’s obsessive love be for a
somewhat androgynous Rochester. I could even, and this requires some strength
of imagination, believe me, picture poor innocent Catherine Earnshaw with a
vaguely unisex Heathcliff. But when, later in life, I saw the Wuthering Heights
movie with that darkly menacing Laurence Olivier, he was so completely
masculine that all fantasy faded. So, I couldn’t really get into movies because
they were so overwhelmingly, 100% at that time, heterosexual. So was
literature, but anyone can take it wherever they want. These days, of course,
we say that ol’ Larry was bisexual, if not homosexual. But either way he’s
completely masculine. Books offer more options than movies.
One member of this
Storytelling group, who rarely attends now, wrote one day of trying so hard to
hide his infatuation with Tab Hunter. I cannot recall that day’s topic, but I
had written of my attempts to fake an attraction to Tab Hunter. I
bought, in our nearest Woolworth’s, a black and white pin-up photo of him, to
attach to my school desk. Oh the sad irony of it, I thought. Two of us, sixty
years ago, thousands of miles apart, trying so hard to use Tab Hunter – and why
him, I ask myself – to define, or not define, our homosexuality. Thank God,
those days are largely gone.
Now, when there is such
vast choice of movies, I have favorites of all kinds. But I have still never
fully embraced ‘going to the movies’, except for drive-ins which I always found
to be great fun. For the most part, movies became more attractive to me when
they became readily available from the comfort of my own home and my own couch.
One of my very favorite,
totally fictional, movies, is ‘Cloudburst’, with Olympia Dukakis; the story of
two old lesbians running off to Canada to be married. It is funny and sad: that
perfect combination that creates fiction at it’s best. I also watch ‘The
History Boys’ every time it’s on TV. A wonderful ‘docudrama’, which Betsy and I
had somehow missed until it appeared on TV a couple of weeks ago, is ‘
Freeheld’, the true story of a New Jersey police lieutenant, dying of cancer,
fighting for her registered partner to receive her pension after her death, as
would be the case with a heterosexual couple. There are endless documentaries,
not to mention a full-length movie, about Alan Turing and all he suffered for
his homosexuality. It’s not that all I ever watch is movies, truth or fiction,
depicting the plight of members of the GLBT community; but they exist.
That is an ever-amazing
thing to me.
They exist.
Movies and I have
followed the same path. We have been on a long journey, but we have arrived.
And we will never, can never, go back. No matter what rhetoric spews from the
mouths of those filled with hate, from Anita Bryant to our newly anointed
vice-presidential candidate, we cannot, and they cannot, undo what we have
done. I, and all of us here, now know ourselves. Everyone else know us. We tell
our stories and the movies tell our stories; not the stories of us, in this
room, perhaps, individually,
but of us, anywhere and everywhere, collectively. We have travelled from
invisibility to out and proud.
If John Cray and I were
kids today, we could, at least in many schools, each embrace some modern
equivalent of Tab Hunter quite openly; I with indifference and John with
passion. Movies have played a huge part in our journey and we owe a debt of
gratitude to those who conceived them, financed them, produced them, and above
all to the many straight actors who were brave enough to act the part of a gay
or lesbian in the early days, when they put their careers at risk by doing so.
In fact, As Roger Ebert,
long-time film critic. stated so beautifully,
“We live in
a box of space and time. Movies are
windows in its walls. They allow us to enter other minds, not simply in the
sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of
it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it.”
Through movies, others
perhaps learned not only to see us, to know us, but, just for a short time, to
be us.
© July 2016 
About
the Author 
 I was born and
raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S.
and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder
area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four
stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself
as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years.
We have been married since 2013.
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Hair, by Betsy

Since there is virtually no one left above ground who was
there and able to remember when I was a newborn babe, I will have to resort
to photos.  I am quite sure I was born
with no hair at all.  When some finally
grew in as a toddler my hair was a color that now many women I know pay big
money for; i.e., blond, really blond and evenly blond.
This did not last long. In early and middle childhood; i.e.,
second grade through puberty, my hair was what was commonly referred to as
dish-water blond. I remember my mother, who was a brunette from birth, rinsing
my hair with lemon juice hoping it would lighten a bit, or at least she hoped
the citrus solution would keep it from going to the dark side.
Like many girls at the time I also had braids.  On very special occasions, when I put on my
velvet dress with the lace collar and Mary Janes, my mother would make “rolls”
above my ears before braiding. When I had rolls, I knew I had to be on my best
behavior.
As adolescent girls and young women we did spend a lot of
time and energy on making our hair what we thought at the time was presentable.
Getting a permanent wave required enduring several hours of
discomfort—bordering torture.  But those
of us with straight hair felt compelled to do something to give our hair some
pizazz.
We employed many kinds of tools and devises to curl our hair.
We wrapped wads of hair around old socks and tied them to hold the hair on the
sock until it curled. So-called curlers came in all shapes and forms besides
the socks. sponges, wire sausage shaped objects, etc. We would go to bed with
these things on our heads—regardless of the pain inflicted while trying to
sleep.
After the hormones kicked in my hair did darken steadily
until late middle age when it became a dark brown. Now, guess what.  It’s going full circle, back to its original
colorless form.
 I know many, many
women of my age group who refuse to reveal that they have any gray hairs. They
go through the monthly ritual at the hair salon enduring hours of treatment costing
lots of dollars to do this. I have never been able to understand that because I
know some women whose white hair is quite beautiful.  I suspect there are men who do the same
cover-up.
Some societies value and revere the signs of old age. Not
here. But I suspect our corporate, capitalistic culture has a lot to do with
it.
I can make the claim in all honestly that I have never put
much effort or resources into making my hair look like something it was
not—except for the lemon juice, which really was non-effective, a couple of
permanent waves out of a bottle, and the socks.
And that’s all I have to say about MY hair.
© 22 Jan 2016 
About the Author 
 Betsy has been active in
the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been
retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major
activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a
volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading,
writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage.
She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren.
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her
life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.
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Ghost, by Ricky

I have no ghost experiences
of my own.  However, I have a friend who
related the following experience to me shortly after it occurred.
In 1977, Deborah and I were
living in married student housing at Brigham Young University at Provo, Utah.  Also living in Provo, was a family friend from
Ft. Walton Beach, Florida whom I will call Sherry.  Sherry had a business partner named Carol who
also was in Provo.  Carol had cancer.
At the time of this event,
Carol was in the hospital dying and Sherry was in bed reading.  Sherry looked up from her book and saw Carol
walk past the doorway pausing briefly to look at Sherry and then walk on.  Sherry later learned the next morning that Carol
had expired at the time Sherry saw her walk past the door to her bedroom.
Life after death?  Are we energy after death?  Do we have spirit bodies after death?  These are questions that only time and death
will prove. 
© 23
April 2017 
About the Author  
 I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their
farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents
divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is: TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com
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Pack Rat, by Ray S

As long as I can remember saving bits and scraps of
memories, Christmas and birthday cards, grade school report cards, birth
announcements, baby books, funeral memorials, and anything else that was too
important to discard in good conscience.
Like the bad penny, no matter how deeply buried all of
that one-time vitally important stuff comes to the surface—no pennies don’t
float, but you know what I mean.
Then there are the material things acquired over the
years. For me just about all of that stuff can tell a story and the prospect of
sentencing it to a new life at ARC or Goodwill can be like divorce or a death
in the family. So much for untold years of materialism.
Just don’t give a damn and announce an estate sale,
but be warned: what happens if no one shows. There is always the Salvation
Army. That might save the day as well as you too.
This one is a lot of work but it might work.
Label with history tags all of the stuff you’ve saved
since World War II so the recipient will know its provenance. Then gather family
and close friends for a Free-for-All.
Again, you run the risk like “Smarty, Smarty had a
party” and nobody came. No matter how hard you try to cut the “silver
cord”—like even the rest of your life, it’s been one more blinking choice you
have to chance it.
You know, trying to get rid of that self nurtured rot
leads to this solution: just get up from your easy chair, leave all of that
clutter on the floor, open the door, lock it, and go out to the bar with a
friend. Tomorrow is another life!
© 24 October 2016 
About the Author 

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Self-Acceptance, by Phillip Hoyle

I believe that my self-perception of being religiously more liberal in a conservative environment, an assumption I learned at home as early as my junior high years, trained me to be self-accepting. In that theological context which was salvationistic and somewhat Calvinistic, I knew the ultimate goal of religion was to love God and neighbor. The moral/ethical code was flexible. I knew I was different but didn’t worry over it. I accepted my differences as not being eternally fatal. I didn’t worry over fitting into something I could not do. I believed I had a place in the larger picture of things. I worked from an introvert space although I knew how to participate in extrovert activities and with extraordinarily extrovert personalities.
I was responsible; adults liked that in me. I laughed easily; kids liked that in me. I liked life. I liked myself. I liked others. I was able to fit in easily enough. I did good class work, was polite, enjoyed choir, went to Boy Scouts, worked at the store, and saved money to go to college. Furthermore, no one around me ranted about sin.
What happened in my early teen developmental phase was quite positive and in most ways reflected the norms of developmental theory. I liked myself with my many projects. I was singing in two choirs, taught myself how to lead music (meaning, gestures for choirs and congregations), and practiced them in front of the mirror where sometimes I fantasized being an orchestral conductor. I worked on merit badges, I read books endlessly, and I learned steps for pop and rock and Native American dancing. I made Indian costumes. I collected Native American art prints. I carried out groceries. I made friends.
In the next few years I watched carefully as life changed for me. I realized the sex play with my friends, the boys among them, still attracted me after the others lost interest. I didn’t turn down opportunities for similar liaisons with newcomers, but I didn’t find many. (Actually, I found only one, and too soon his family moved away.) Still I developed friendships with girls and with straight guys. I was busy. Still am. I liked my life. I was entrusted with leadership, even leadership I didn’t especially want. Still am.
Lucky me—I didn’t get kidded much, was rarely taunted, and never beat up. Because I was used to being different, when I did encounter the occasional put down, I didn’t believe it and even might interpret it as a kind of intimacy. I liked myself and knew other people liked me too. Besides, I was too busy to worry over it.
In high school years I undertook interior decoration as a supplement to my Indian fascination, took an interest in fine art and frames, and engaged in more visual artwork. I continued taking music lessons and played piano and sang. I listened to all kinds of music and sang at church, school, and civic functions.
All my adult life I have kept busy, busy, busy! When I worked I did several jobs and in some ways contributed a lot more work than any church paid me for. I composed and arranged music for my choirs. I taught training workshops, led discussion groups, and taught core curricula in bible and theology. I taught a class in congregational education organization for the Missouri School of Religion. And I attended endless meetings, worked on boards and committees in churches, among clergy, within the denomination, in interdenominational settings, and the larger community. I led a denomination-wide professional organization, planned camps, coordinated conferences, on and on. Eventually I wrote religious education resources for a publishing company. I deeply enjoyed my family, deeply loved my wife, and deeply loved a few men.
My eldest sister said it most clearly, “At home we learned that the big sin was to be bored.” I guess I was an over achiever. Still am. Still accept and love myself. Still write and read and entertain. Still do many social things with my diverse pool of friends.
My urologist saw something in me besides my much enlarged prostate gland. He said I was lucky. I attributed it all to my genetic inheritance. He thought it was something else. He and I finally agreed my luck was due to both nature and nurture. Besides my genetically inherited Pollyanna tendencies, there were the open attitude of my family, attendance in integrated schools, and working in a grocery store from age thirteen. Even the church I grew up in and worked in was not sectarian and pursued an ecumenical vision. I am its child and I like life. I like and accept myself with all my differences. And especially, I like my differences.
© 12 Dec 2016 
About the Author 
 Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com